Of Circus And Bread in the Daze of Chaos: An Open Letter the PM Luxon and the Right Honorable Chris Hipkins

Good day Gents:

Well, that was surely entertaining fellas!  This passing  election cycle , in which New Zealand  publicly voted  to  their deepening  silos of  political and social division ,  demonstrably by way of a triple-coalition government taking 43 calendar days to foment an agreement between a self-loathing right wing  Māori in David Seymour , a megalomaniacal, free-press hating, paleolithic political fossil in Winston Peters, and yourself, Prime Minister, an empty suit schooled in the primacy of  crony corporate Capitalism by way of your time as CEO with  Unliver in London,  Chi-town and  Toronto, eventually moving on to Air New Zealand  so that you could squash any racket  made about living  wage  amongst the front-line workers  of that world-renowned airline. Equally entertaining is the current slaughter of all Labour policies that the Coalition is embarking on- many of which were ineffective, unrealistic, or just plain window dressing. Addition by subtraction: the appearance of  progressive action and strength . It's great theatre, indeed, but is about as vital in substance as  candy floss. 

Nice work!

To The Right Honourable Hipkins, your leadership  was nothing short of complete milquetoast and  maladroit  ministry  that  you continued from your benefactor and predecessor Jacinda  Ardern, a pseudo social democrat.  Labour's impudence was in full effect for 6 years, and  did nothing that is worth really raving about policy-wise. You let the wolves in the parlour: giving access to  the monolithic  corporate criminal  syndicate of BlackRock to take root in Aotearoa. You let  affordable housing and low-income builds  throughout New Zealand slow to a crawl during Labour's  entire time in office, and demand has sharply risen, creating wait lists for people who are in desperate need of public housing.  Lack of public housing means  a steady increase in homeless Mr. Hipkins, lest you are unaware. 

Labour did little to help resettle migrants during and after CoViD, and were more than happy to send 'em back where they came from, rather than allow historical  access to MSD emergency benefits,  of which your party had actually sanctioned. Your agencies  placed in charge of the  temporary benefit program Manaaki Manuhiri, which was enacted for 3 months in 2020  ran through the Red Cross , with DIA Foreign Visitors Centre acting as the final line of  approval,  was land-mined with snipers  using vague requirements and rules that could be made ultra-flexible in context, giving room for harsh declination and rendering a  deliberately difficult path for redress and appeal . I know this personally, for as a migrant, I experienced this verbatim. Unlike a lot of my compatriots  who were dealt with the same way by DIA and had surrendered their fight,  I was able to traverse and battle through the slippery and unethical grievance process, being belittled,  bullied, disenfranchised  and overtly lied to by several agency  staff members employed by the DIA along the way . I ultimately won appeal on the very last day of the program -30th November. This  nearly two month fight led to mine being in arrears in rent, electric and water, aggravating my attempts in attaining  work after being laid off. 

That's not public assistance, Mr. Hipkins,  that's  game-playing political expediency rendering the facade of compassion for public consumption .  Ardern , yourself   and Labour did all you could to hide your disdain of migrants, as the party brought into the fable of there being  a vast expanse of able-bodied kiwis  ready, willing and available to step up and move the economy back into its pre-pandemic heights. Ardern's inability to acknowledge  the kiwi latitude and cultural antipathy toward work as a whole was sheer comedy. Out of all industrial nations worldwide,  New Zealand has the smallest average work week  , at 37 hours . It was migrants that drove New Zealand's GDP up through productivity and innovation in the preceding years. Post Covid, Labour did nothing to stop the  en masse  exodus of skilled labour  that occurred, whilst at the other end doing exactly zero meaningful  stewardship for a  talented migrant and skilled kiwi labour pool that had been forcibly returned to the island  from overseas during the pandemic. Only being moved to meaningful action by artifice  when  forced by petition did Labour's  inept immigration czar Kris Faafoi  allow amnesty for migrants caught in protocol and visa limbo hell, and a pathway to residency.

Labour was the party with the mandate in 2021, and did nothing but steady the ship after Covid, and made no true action on the coming onslaught  of exacerbated class inequality . A truly centrist government beholden to its core lobbyists and special interest and nothing more. Labour has learned nothing from its latent hue of policy mediocrity . The proof of its immense self-inflicted disability by the legacy of your party's  pseodo-progressive governance , is the very allowance of Labour  letting you lead the opposition against the same elected government you allowed to set Labour alight like  a cheap polyester shirt left in the dryer for too long.

Burnt ,shrunk , and left in the stench of  toxic melt. 

Now you cackle and crow in defiance of  PM Luxon and the Shutdown Twinz and their goonish languidity , oafish self-aggrandizement and empty , codified xenophobic hubris masquerading as a "strong government"  coalition. Your expansive verbiage and debate mastery to heckle these sallow henchmen you will impart, indeed. It will be the empty space you will inhabit in that liminal melancholy which  is most tragic, Mr. Hipkins. There was an opportunity you could have  fend off these dark arbiters that keep the middle and lower classes fighting amongst themselves , now entrenched into their silos for the next three years. You did  nothing.  Your pragmatic idling allowed the danger of mulit-national infiltrators of corporate hegemony to take root. You didn't rise to it.  They, the Corporate paranoids of the right,  after exposing your incredible lack of  street smarts,  punched you and Labour in the mouth, and sent you to the back of the bus. 

All  you can now do is cowl and virtue-signal as the minority in Parliament,  Labour reduced to  no more than a  theatre troupe vainly seeking an audience.

And you, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, now your coalition in full forward motion with the  anti-intellectual ACT and NZ First glitterati, a modular dysfunctional vehicle of  pure artifice if ever there was one. For many of us who remained slightly above a semi-conscious state during the electoral campaign recognize what it is you truly are in politics for...

Everyone who  looks like you, acts like you, and is monied like you. 

The real estate class, the property owners. The paper-chasing humanoids of the financial sector who are into  expanding  profit,  mass consumption of resources,  and personal gain at the expense and  death of people and cultures,   all while  nations burn to the ground. The 'WEF invitee class' who cannot wait to subjugate the lower classes and bring them to heal, all while telling them  what they can and cannot say. 

There's alot to unpack here..and  to unload on you.

First off: Your intent on banning gang patches, as if to suggest by merely covering up or removing  a piece of stitched insignia apparat ,you can eliminate the gangs themselves via  penalties, forfeitures and  the eschew  of other instruments of state-sponsored  fiduciary terrorism .  This act of censorship  (and it is censorship in its intent to quash free expression) not only is a core demonstration of your pervasive lack of imagination, but speaks firmly how you really view those who come from poverty, recidivism, domestic violence, homelessness, drug abuse, rape, failing and fading  resources, suppressed wages, stunted upward mobility  and higher death rates overall, and haven't any income source meaningful beyond interstate drug dealing and territorial control

They're all  just criminals. 

No longer human beings  in the vox populi campaign you ran as some kind of pseudo champion of the people  a la Donald Trump. They are merely animals that need to be interred at the zoo. This aligns with your current rush to remove te reo Māori from public services, publications and spaces forthwith.. It is  wanton dehumanizing  of  primarily ethnic groups  at both ends of this censorship spectrum:  on one end shutting  down free expression that is cauterized as socially and publicly   'offensive' and 'criminal', and at the other  end, diminishing indigenous language as  'unnecessary' and 'irrelevant',  relegating its cultural importance to general marginalization is obtusely authoritarian , and historically, a colonial act of deliberate cultural disenfranchisement . Native Americans, Aboriginals, Moriori, and countless other  native cultures have had their language stripped, were violently displaced and destroyed by European colonial conquest worldwide. During the Māori 'activation' protest which ascended on Wellington on 5 December , when asked about it by the press during your new government rollout, you claimed ignorance as to why they were protesting initially , reinstating the artifice of bringing together New Zealand as 'one people' What you meant was  white people, Prime Minister.

A nation strictly for  those who look like you, act like you, and are monied like you.

And you proudly represent the Professional Managerial Class. which excludes poor whites as well. Sure, you tailored your campaign to draw their vote , particularly in the rural areas and farming communities.  You made your prerequisite  pit stops and campaign stumps at areas  where  the working white  poor were made even poorer by natural disasters in the past year. What expresses contempt toward the most vulnerable is the very construct you and National's willingness to pull down and away the very benefits keeping them afloat. It's the politics of  class assault: dissolve the social compact,  shatter the windows of  the public space, revert the  monies and safety nets  so as to deliver back  to your compatriots  who are members of the global 1%. Your apparent  dream is  to hear champagne glasses clicking in the skyscraper penthouses and  salons of power,   whilst  down in the dirge and filth of the cities below,  law enforcement swarm and trap homeless families like sewer rats to carrion, as to be taken away, to incarceration, so as to disappear from your view, not to cause you discomfort as you partake in the festivities..

ACTs pronouncement about increasing the construction of prisons and  the relaxing of stringent gun laws further supports this divisive environment by creating a circus of distraction and violence among the classes, whilst the upper 10% continue profiting through  tax loopholes snuck through Parliament at the behest  of you donors., of which  Winston Peters is already in their back pockets, in putrid cynical fashion.

How to figure this assumption of  this being your intent as Prime Minister, Mr Luxon? I'm an American Kiwi. I have seen the result of the deliberate disleveraging  parlayed on my people, the working class poor. I watched my city , Los Angeles-  pummel 70, 000 people into the streets all across L.A. county proper , 40% of which are families .  Across freeway overpasses and footpaths littered with tents, hunger, police harassment , stress, bile and insomnia. At one time I was one of them: No games, Prime Minister,  you can read it here.and here . I haven't forgotten that feeling of being less-than,  being judged, and being criminalised for trying to recover from circumstances I did not create, but was created by a system of inequity used to benefit the upper 1%. No workers rights meant I lost not one, but two jobs without discernible reason. I was working an average of 60 hours a week to support my family, then, suddenly parsed public assistance that did not cover basic  living and breathing, then further down the line- eviction, then: out in the streets for the next 4 months.

I was defined  as a low life. A loser. A criminal.  Language your class uses to describe us  on the streets and shelters , living out of cars,  camper vans and  caravans, Mr. Luxon., the 'whiners' and 'losers' among us. I wonder how many homeless people that came across your purview that  you scoffed  at on your way to the office in Chicago. I wonder about the presence of your  fellow pasty-faced  American corporate homeboys  you rolled with who  barked  and bellowed about "these low-life niggers" running the streets on the south side.  

You have never  wont for anything, never been  destitute, and have had full access to upward mobility.  In that, I wonder what you would have done if you had been working  as a hotel  security agent in a  5 star luxury Hotel situated at the  landmark Hollywood and Vine intersection in the heart of  Tinsel Town at  2am  on a frothy and sleepy November eve,  , when a seeminigly  homeles man ,  self-proclaiming to be a Marine veteran who had just returned from Afghanistan rocks up,  his head fully consumed in  his  combat PTSD , in your establishment's  lobby with a .45 caliber pistol pressed firmly through the bottom of his empty backpack, begins arguing with front desk staff, and when you approach him to ask him what is going on, he  openly confers to you directly his  contemplation  of  murder-suicide of all those present  and you having no weapon on your person  except your wits.  Curious if you would managed to craftly and adeptly show compassion to the gentlemen, and talk him down, even though your terrified your one-off attempt might find you in a coffin,  or  would you defecate in  your trousers, say something blindingly impish with a  high squeal of terror at the top of your  larynx, and manage  to get yourself, and everyone on shift with you in  the somber early morning  some toe tags tied fitted to each of  your dead feet as your carted off in a meat wagon  to the morgue. Just another American Mass shooting statistic for the next news cycle.

It's a true story. I actually managed to get the poor bastard to put away his weapon and, after he verified his active duty status when he voluntarily presented his military ID card, I gave him  a hotline number to the very  veterans assistance which I had used myself when I ended up homeless. Being a vet myself, I understood the futration he felt  of feeling discarded and forgotten after my service. He was a combat marine: a trained killer who needed  deprogramming. I bring this forward not as braggadocio. The point is that the class you represent creates and manufactures conflict to covet more resources, materials and land for your collective enterprises globally. Your class kills us in large numbers through your wars of  corporate profit expansion. It is disgusting, Prime Minister Luxon, that you haven't any issue with being the custodian of the corporate monoliths  who want to eventually have  us all killed if we don't 'comply', and get out of their way.

You're not ignorant of this either, Prime Minister. You are fully aware of this in fact, and don't give a damn, and for the simplest of reasons.You don't have to.

Many New Zealand  voters missed this aspect of your progeny, including  your wealth being built on investment , particularly in property management and as a tenured CEO of multiple corporations. This  has solidified  your bias  of  advancing Capitalism to profit  from both personally, professionally as well as to benefit your  other corporate criminal  contemporaries in three-piece suits. You speak in the language of  'American gangster' capitalism , utilising the deceptive double-speak sloganeering of 'creating better outcomes  for New Zealanders through expanding business' , giving tax deferment  to Property managers and landlords which in itself solidifies inequality and corners the working poor, which you will further throw battery  acid on them  via oppressed wages and neuter any ability for workers to negotiate for better pay and elevation in  their status and station.

And you have gotten over so far, with the entirety of New Zealand 's news media (both state-run and independant) having  completely taken their eye off the ball and letting you off the hook, having  never challenged you on the fact the PMC you rep deliberately  contribute to divisive xenophobia , fear mongering, policy inversion, encouragement of  social violence  so as to use laws to curtail personal freedoms such as free speech and privacy.  You have essentially modeled your policies to be  textbook American policy via lobbyism from mulit-national corporations such as  BlackRock, Vanguard, the fossil fuel industry and Big Pharma. 

You don't care, Prime Minister. You just want a seat at that table. And another 3 , maybe four years in power to expand your CV and line your coffers and pockets . You don't have to care personally, as you know you are shielded from any consequences of your intended policies of pure rot and grift for the elites. They will aid in your protection from the rest of us.

There is one little problem for both of you, and for varying reasons of concern, gentlemen. Because of your collective self-interest, incompetence of progressive policy making and narcissism , you are bringing Aotearoa closer to the sunken place:  that  ride up to the edge of the waterfall of  ultra- violence ,  media and government  collusion in censorship and propaganda, militarised policing killing unarmed poor whites and people of color,  extreme  class inequality left over from Capitalism  which has left it a living graveyard of calcified institutions  enshrined and stained with the rust and filth of corruption, just like a place 11,000 kilometeres from our location....  

A dying republic called the United States

Can I  make it any clearer?

KC Shoen

The 2023 General Election: Of Polity and Inequality

Neither Labour nor National can weather the coming onslaught of  corporate corruption and malfeasance as they both are keen to invite  foreign money to 'invest' in Aotearoa

KC SHOEN

The Plausible Scenario

Imagine as a  relatively small  nation of  5 million people, that the new incoming  government  elected this October has already  came into power and put forth a tough-on-crime policy for legislative approval.  Assume also that a coalition  plurality is strong enough in numbers for the prevailing party to support such intensive measures to become law. 

Fast forward about 3 years, and suddenly 15-20% of that 5 million are incarcerated under these new draconian 'anti-crime' measures. You notice not only that the conviction, sentencing  and  incarceration rates  skyrocketing simultaneously,  but the the knock-on effect of  prisons being built rise exponentially  so as to facilitate and warehouse these newly-minted criminals. Of the incarcerated, you note astutely, that  this expanded prison population  mostly consists of people of colour (pacifica & maori) who  make up about nearly 70%  of the dominant demographic, with lower/working class Pākehā making up nearly the  other 23-25%. As time gets on, and with these measures continued, you do note crime levels drop only slightly, except in two of the most critical  areas needed for continuing a stable & just society: high theft & burglaries and  violent crime, including mass shootings. You find that these are escalating at a harrowing rate unforeseen in New Zealand's history. They become more common,  more frequent,  and more destructive.

You notice that the the recidivism rates actually increased under the newer,  more harsh anti-crime measures. Domestic violence, suicide rates, drug use are all rising faster than in previous years.   In tandem to this excess, the  government rescinds  requirements  regarding the  levying of higher tax against corporations and the wealth accumulation of  affluent individuals, specifically in regard to capital gains tax and revenue profit taking, as an attempt to curry favorable consideration of foreign investment throughout the country. This attempt actually exasperates two major dynamics already  long-neglected in 2023: Corporate profit- taking driven  inflation,  which expanded class inequality via increased rentals and rent cost, health care, a steep rise in the rate of homelessness,  and adding further insult, the affluent class in New Zealand pays nearly no taxes, as  the general tax burden shifts downward to to the full-spectrum middle class to shoulder.  

As you live in one of New Zealand's five-largest cities, you note your daily trek to work is littered with tents alongside busy footpaths. A sizable homeless population is now  occupying green spaces meant originally as reserves for public enjoyment,  having become makeshift outdoor emergency shelters for these  swiftly-erected tent cities- 40% of  which house low-income working families. The extreme class inequality is extraordinarily evident , and mortifying. Violent gangs and general thuggery now thrive in this space, as does other violent anti-social activity.  The accelerated rise  of single-parent families  in poorer communities,  in part from the expansion of the carceral state,  has become  both the new norm as well as the majority . An entire generation now is lost. As is your community, your city and your country...

If you gotten this far in to this article, you might find the entirety of this future-narrative a bit of a melodramatic  dystopian  exaggeration. Which is understandable, until you look northwest across the Pacific and  become aware of the fact ( as laid before you in  multiple links provided by the highlighted words within the sentence, below) that these near-apocalyptic scenarios are  occurring, in real  time. in a far away land about 11,000 kilometers from our shores....

A dying republic called the United States

The Two-Headed Chris, A village missing its idiot, and The  Green bewilderedness

Chris Hipkins is essentially a left-over: the remnants of a once uber  centralist-liberal dream that disintegrated, retreating back to its mediocre roots after outsized influence largely from  it's response to Covid. And just like its charismatic orator and last benefactor,  Jacinda Ardern, who pretended to be a democratic socialist,  Labour pretends to be a robustly progressive tent,  but these three collectively have always  been centrist with corporate leanings.  Left-over  Hipkins, whose profile raised surreptitiously after advising folks to 'spread their legs ' during lockdown, saw his profile raised exponentially when Ardern split the scene to Cambridge, Massachusetts  (to feast on fellowship monies provided by the American  criminal corporate  1%  through their  one-time slave-owning ivy league university) , has been less than spectacular. This is not a dig on the ginger gent's lack of strong presence, but more on his lack of substance. 'In it for you;' has about as much sincerity as a campaign slogan as a gossip columnist swearing they don't engage in blackmail of their celebrity prey du jour, no matter how high the bounty. This is him trying to put some 'Hip" into his namesake, and appear authentic before his constituents. His releasing of Labour's  9 point pledge  is a repackaging  of what the party has already has historically backed,  performed on ,  or promised previously, and does nothing to face expanding class inequality.

Hipkins himself, a product of New Zealand academia, has shown meddle as a man whom will fight for a cause he deems fit, such as when he was wrongfully arrested back in 1997 when protesting the  Tertiary Review Green Bill at Parliament. He has shown striking tenacity and a steady hand both in the Auckland Anniversary weekend flooding of 2023 and Cyclone Gabriel. There is no question he is built for crisis, and can manage adeptly, unlike his counterpart, Auckland's  mealy-mouthed, moribund and morally bankrupt mayor Wayne Brown who completely wilted in self-defensive postering when he couldn't manage his way through a paper bag, let alone a functional emergency response for a city under deluge. 

But it's Hipkins'  centrist position that is wholly destructive, as is it  not guided by conditions on the ground, nor guided by the understanding of the world in which New Zealand resides in at current.  Mental acuity to grasp the nature of what is causing the nation to fall further back socio- economically is not a strong suit he bares with any true command . A pragmatist always lacks peripheral  vison to enable full-spectrum view, especially when its comes to matters of nascent  corporate incongruity.  Under his stead, the uber-criminal syndicate of  Black Rock has been allowed to start sucking up capital for 'sustainable green projects', and has fortified its presence. For those sullied  by my identifying  BlackRock as a criminal organization as being capricious or conspiratorial , consider this:  they are owners of an electric company in  Maui, Hawaii, that mysteriously cut off power to Lahaina six hours before the  horrific fire that leveled only the poorest housing  and structures, and killing only the poorest residents in south Maui, sparing the multi-million dollar homes  and hotels in the area . The same organization whom pushed  Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron  of France to forcibly raise the  retirement age without an open referendum nor consideration of public debate which sparked  month's long protests throughout the country.  As further evidence of the monolithic chicanery this behemoth is involved in , just watch  a certified recruiter from the company explain their global ambitions...

Video Courtesy of: O'Keefe Media Group (OMG). 

Hipkins lacks the global 'street smarts' in staving off vulture capitalists who are itching to buy thier way into New Zealand' s fragile market  and wreck the place for their own profit. The allowance of BlackRock to come in  and establish itself is profoundly telling of the putative naiveté that  he himself, and many members of parliament have toward foreign investors intentions, particularly, American, British  & Chinese hedge funders and investment firms that are completely self-benefitting and devoid of any ethical standard of 'fair play', no longer in service in creating new wealth for clients, but expanding wealth for themselves solely even if it means creating a  language that communicates environmental concerns they have no intention of meaningfully participating in. 

All the while, The Ardern/ Hipkins  led Labour continued shutting out and down migrants during CoVid, and leaving them to return to unsafe ramparts of nefarious  origins whilst allowing the likes of the DIA to manipulate away needed benefits they had temporarily been given unprecedented qualified access to receive, and allowing a toadie to run Immigration New Zealand into the ground. 

As a consequence,  Hipkins and Labour over the last 5 years have let the wolves into the parlour. 

The other Chris, Mr. Luxon , former MP of Botany is a  political- corporate creature unabashedly representing the interests of the managerial class. Having attain the heights of  CEO of Unilever in Toronto, Canada by way of Chicago, U.S. at the tender age of 38. C-Lux's  exposure the grand heights of capitalism during his time in North America left  in him an indelible mark. Having been born into a Roman Catholic family where Dad was a sales exec for Johnson & Johnson and his mother a psychotherapist gave  him  the kind of access to better schooling and opportunities that only this background can offer  through  disparity of access via inequality that is the Capitalist Way:  The Winners & Losers ,  of which he was on the winning side. In  recent years, this attribute would express itself through his  having no interest in allowing livable wages for workers during his time with Air New Zealand, and no care about curtailing malfeasance from investor toxicity.

If any one government is ready to show BlackRock and other 'foreign investors' some love, it's Luxon- homelessness by suffocating  housing unaffordability, rising food insecurity, wage deflation and recidivism be damned.... Cone on in boys! Lets Do This! 

His continuous roll-out of embarrassing policies wholly lacking in self-awareness, such as the youth rental bond initiative, his pretentious defense that his tax deferment policy of the upper class  will benefit the economy and curtail poverty, while leaving a $2 billion dollar hole to shore up fiscal appropriation,  and his sallow, vague  pulp being the National Party 8 point plan   is a strong showing  of what an empty suit he is. C-Lux's refusal to consider capital gains and luxury tax, in turn a blatant refusal to make the upper 10% pay their share, is demonstrative of  his obtuse self-interest and inane indifference to the current state of iniquity being experienced by the middle and lower working class in New Zealand. A view that Hipkins also holds , expressing his own naive lack of vision, backbone, and passivity in the matter

The debate that took place between these two bricks of the establishment wall on the 19th of September in Auckland  for mass media consumption and soundbytes,  only further fomented that both are actually the  same: neo-liberal centrists with no handle on the inequality that both their parties contribute due to ineffectual policies. The Ardern/ Hipkins camp, although brilliantly guiding the nation through the first 18 months of the pandemic, have done little else,  being nothing more than  mere custodians of polity for  oncoming corporate interest heading into the country. Chris Luxon's post-Key National Party was the party who single-handedly allowed New Zealand's credit rating  with Standard and Poor's and Fitch Group to fall through the floor during their last reign. The same National Party always willing to cut the social  safety net away from the most vulnerable to appease their criminal foreign investor  friends, which in turn, set in motion the current landscape of intense disparity the likes this country has not seen.

Although Hipkins did mop up the floor with Luxon's face using confirmed facts and figures verses Luxons  shallow and repetitive use of sloganeering  masquerading as legitimate expression of policy, the debate was as hollow as wingbone: light and breezy, pseudo substantive and  inflective performative theatre. A mere artifice of placative entertainment not meant to put genuine resolve into action. The more dangerous bits was Luxon's commitment to ban gang patches ( a form of censorship) and  the  allowance of expansion of large  tech companies into New Zealand , a problematic proposition given their dubious history

Further concerning was both candidates commitment to criminalizing 'hate speech', another form of censorship which part of a much larger issue involving  global oligarchical control over the masses. 

ACT's David Seymour has been reduced to just being comedy relief, and while  I could prattle on as to the wonderment of his vacuous existence, and the  ACT party being the mirror of the  violent, empty heads that occupy American House Freedom Caucus as well, I'll let John Campbell 'hold the mic and spit this'  as his 'bars are phat'. I will say his misinformed  and boisterous musings make  for great entertainment. My favourite moment of anti-intellectual rumblings was when he was debating Chloe Swarbrick on NewsHub AM about how to best approach the uptick in criminal activity since CoVID. While she  was coherently laying her argument against harsher penalties for young offenders with verified facts and figures in relation to a solution that can be effective , he could only bellow superlative hyperbole " We just need strong sentencing!! New Zealand has become a third world country!!". Somewhere out amongst the countryside, a village is truly missing its idiot...

And this idiot and his party might have enough to get the 61 seats necessary to make a majority coalition with National...

 

The Greens, outside of Chloe Swarbrick, however,  are  hyper-focused on environmental impacts like climate change initiatives,  de-carbonization, implementation of alternative fuels, and overall improvement to food and water purity. They  do not, however,  address class inequality. 

A green bewilderment.

Not addressing class inequality as the primary crisis makes other 'green initiatives' absolutely unattainable and without solid structural base to enact. Put simply, if people are too broke to manage sustaining what they need  to live properly, they will not have time nor care to meaningfully pursue these matters with any brevity.  Without the leverage of equality, the environment will continue to suffer. Being participatory in the facade of 'green initiatives' enacted by multinational corporations is not only naive in itself, but is also superficial as such entities only care about profit, and will sell a captive audience anything they wish to hear, so as  to continue raping foreign lands globally of resources unencumbered. The Greens are the one party that can cease this activity in totality. They need to discontinue the mixed-messaging and focus first on driving back Capitalism-induced poverty, pay  disparity, and the speculatory-driven  housing prices and rents . No other party in Aotearoa  can or will do it. They should also force Labour's hand to start moving in that space from a policy context

This is assuming Labour even comes back to majority or coalition rule in parliament . They may not...

New Zealand voters collectively  are moving toward a "Lesser of Two Evils" approach this cycle, one that does not work. I know this intimately because I am American by birthright, and I have seen this movie before. Voting alone will not yield the change of course of class inequality. It will worsen, and as a result recidivism will rise in tandem with criminal activity, especially among the young. Gang membership , collectively at around 8,900 strong in New Zealand, is growing faster in membership than the rate of newly hired and trained police officers, which currently stand at around 10,000 . Illicit activity will draft new recruits into the gangs as other assessable  resources  are reduced and curtailment of upward mobility continues to exert pressure and the most vulnerable- the working lower class/ unemployed  poor.

One Last Point...

Labour, National, ACT, and NZ First are complete  centrist garbage as a collective. Green Party is ineffective unless  it has majority coalition with itself at the lead, and this is would  only be erstwhile if Ms. Swarbrick can get the other  enviro-obsessed members to start focusing on class inequality, as that  is where 'all the bodies are buried'.  

There is no danger of the Greens forming a new majority coalition government in October  according to the current poles. I have a better chance at winning the lotto

New Zealande voters themselves need to take stock in their neighbours wellbeing, irrespective of differing  political leanings. We are part of the 'rest of the world' in the severity of the circumstances we find ourselves in.  If you need any evidence to suggest the plausible outcome of not bettering our neighbours and ourselves to a  more equal footing  through living wage and reasonable cost of living, if you still  view Capitalism as  all good, and becoming wealthy off the backs of others means your 'special', I would like to re-direct your attention as evidence to this place 11,000km northwest of here..

A dying republic called the United States

How They Will End Us

 In the dues ex machina which has expanded billionaire wealth from the CoVid pandemic , the managerial class are  writing their  'happy ending': the killing of the rest of us.

KC SHOEN

"It is impossible to separate the breakdown of civic culture, the collapse of language, and a rise in insurrectionist violence in the United States from the plague of gangster capitalism. Under a regime of privatized utopias, hyper-individualism, and ego-centered values, human beings are reduced to self-sufficient atoms of self-interest, removed from relations of mutual dependency. A neoliberal market-driven society has given rise to a culture of fear, uncertainty, and danger that numbs many people just as it wipes out the creative faculties of imagination, memory, and critical thought. Rather than live in a historical period that awakens the critical faculties, Americans now occupy a social order that freezes and numbs the capacity for informed judgment. " Henry Giroux

As the vestiges of democracy throughout the world continue to evaporate into the full illusion of fantastical fiction,  and should compliance from the masses cease and turn into full-scale social  rebellion worldwide,  the oligarchs and the WEF are preparing to kill us off completely via the  reduction of  access to food and water, the institution of trackable and controllable central digital currency which can be siphoned  from private bank accounts with  just a keystroke 

This is not conjecterous rancor nor paranoid conspiratorial hyperbole. It  has started in earnest. 

Countries like the United States, Australia & New Zealand where active resistance against repressive censorship from establishment narratives of corporate media are inert and  nearly non-extant, the once-quiet creep of the slow muzzling of public dissent against such capitalist narratives have become profoundly outbound; noisily possessing the compunction to interrupt, misdirect, propagandize in unfettered saturation,  mute, and imprison its populace without so much as a collective  shrill holler in defiance.

Coupled with the cultural  unwillingness to unify in protest in the U.S.in particular, there are three partitions that will allow this continued repression of rights by the corporate oligarch to persist to our global death: The Corporate /Donor Class partition, The Law Enforcement/ Para-military partition and The Elected Political Sycophant partition. I will focus  on the Corporate partition, as they are the ring-leaders to the other two who  get their marching orders from. This is a kinship of wanton control and/or elimination of laws, governmental processes of oversight, progressive  social policies that intervene their control, subvert their advantage, and counters ideological constructs they are positioned in , or create as narrative.

The Lords of Kingdoms: The Corporate/Donor Class partition 

"All that is needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere. Political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The personality of the candidate, the way he is projected by the advertising experts, are the things that really matter." -Aldous Huxley-'Enemies Of Freedom Essays'-1958

For historical  context, American companies such as Ford, Coca-Cola, and Kodak all supported Hitler's  fascism, as it was financially and ideologically beneficial to to so. Being the nation that was the genesis of Eugenics,  racial segregation , and suppression which influenced Hitler's Ayrian  dream, these American-bred companies had became natural allies  of the Third Reich rendering direct  confluence and aid to  Germany to  becoming  a powerhouse of industrialization during the mid- 1930's to early 40's.  Having the support of  the SA:  a conglomeration of military veterans, para-military organizations and members of  law enforcement,  allowed Hitler and the NSDAP protection against groups who vehemently opposed them before and during his reign. Cronies positioned in critical points of the Nazi governmental and military posts lent Hitler continuity, even expansion of his ideological vision and command through propaganda, violence, and corporate backing. This same coalition of  collusional corruption allowed  for the stealth cover of the  protracted use of gas chambers and prison death camps to continue operations right up to the very last day of World War II.

The Powell Memo in 1971 was the device which began the corporate takeover of US policy via lobbying and the administrative revolving-door  to posts within the Federal Government for  former industry  CEOs , hedge funders and other 'captains of industry'.  The ramping  up of financial deregulation and union-busting during the  Reagan era  (that continues under Biden),  in tandem with Clinton-era's further protection roll-backs against corporate malfeasance and economic manipulation , fostering  further erosion and curtailment of  the public welfare safety net, the destruction of Social Security and further making toxic the Public Trust , alongside increased  military defense  spending rising  substantially since 1980,  (which currently allocates over 45% of discretionary tax revenue ) .  

Multi-national corporations world-wide haven't the slightest issue with dealing in misdirection by deliberate misinformation, even if  their activity, or associations with such violent regimes causes mass death. It is not their concern, just the margin of profits  and their coalesced retention of power via the purchase of elected bodies of governments so as  to enhance the  sphere of control they covet. This forwards the providing of policies for protection of wealth and capital being most paramount,  updrafting  lost income as revenue from any economic destabilization of the worker, including foreclosures and evictions  furthering the deliberate destruction of the public space and social contracts that articulate the provisions of social welfare for the working class itself. 

This includes 95% of the population of the western world that comes under the purview of the  oligarchical 1%.,  essentially, all of 'us' being those who are not recognized members of this strata class. They are the late-Capitalist Lords to our Kingdoms of  global serfdom, and we are now more than ever in human history,  under thier complete rule.

As example, view the totality of  the Covid pandemic:  from  its origin, creation, how it escaped from a lab in China after  human experimentation, the application of scientifically unproven  methodologies to mitigate and manage that were applied freely by governments upon their citizens,  to the unsubstantiated and incomplete research  that was the resulting vaccines  by its primary purveyor, the ensuing evidence of  adverse reactions to it, the Covid death rates between  the vaccinated being nearly the same as the unvaccinated,  additionally further victims who were  confirmed as killed by the vaccine exclusively while the high frequency of vaccinated persons  who where confirmed as diagnosed with myocarditis from the mRNA , the further censorship of factual information about these harms by conglomerate legacy and social media platforms, all of whom are sponsored by advertising revenue via the aforementioned  purveyor, the corruption, past and present discovered upon the purveyor, and the purveyor's callous antipathy towards negligible outcomes within global populations. 

Add to this the fact that as of 2021  the largest donor to the World Health Organization is the United States and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (including GAVI,)  total nearly $1.87 billion dollars.  This does not include the World Bank , an American-based  institution which donated $132 million , and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) also based in New York City, US,  which donated $103 million dollars of its own.  So, it is not a completely speculatory, or even qualifying as paranoid delusion, to state the WEF's members obvious and  intense interest in the outcome of the recent amended changes to the  the WHO's  global IHR of 1969, (the amendments  categorized as the 'pandemic treaty'),  which has assigned (unelected) delegates from  each member country to 'sign off' and authorize approval of these amendments without public notification nor referendum. By placing the powers of surveillance, control of movement of peoples, a requirement for every human being to enroll and scanned into  a global digital health record tracking system  , to be accessed and  used within the sole discretion of  the executive branch of every member state government. 

On just the strength of this  alone you can view the continuing pattern of regulatory entities within government, as well as the private sector colluding to ensure that, above all,  profits and power are retained at the expense of the populous and the control thereof, by all means necessary.

Combined further with the IMF's cheerleading on centralized digital currency's worldwide implementation, which would eventually  criminalize personal possession of crypto,  placing limits on personal cash possession, could further  constrict, confine and isolate an entire populous with several keystrokes on  a laptop  by  one of any presiding Presidents or Prime Ministers under cloak of pandemic emergency, particularly those segments within a nation-state population who vigorously protest against such hegemonistic apoplexy being thrusted upon them against their will . Free speech and redress of grievance could be bankrupted into silence such as was done to the  the Canadian truckers who protested  against mandates back  in early '22, but on a much greater technological  scale then was previously imagined.

 In recent years the movement toward institutional implementation of  direct censorship masquerading as 'hate speech laws' has gained sizable traction. The Corporate/Donor Class partition has regularly instituted language coda deemed undesirable in corporate or social discourse for several decades. As a participating sycophant of the WEF,  former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was quite the enthusiastic voice for this polity wishing to criminalize such unpleasant non-threatening  protected free speech under this canon. The same one BlackRock has utilized in its ESG sloganeering, portending, and pretending to honor racial tolerance and  civility within the workplace,   ethical environmental practices and corporate  governance. 

This comparison might appear conflated, until you understand how both methodologies undermine free speech in totality. They  accomplish two objectives: 1) render a soft bifurcated censorship  disguised as polity for mass approval being 'disguised' as  creating a 'safe harbour' against  'bad or hateful' language in public spaces and media, and  2) establishing dictates to impart artificial morals against what is designated as 'improper'  or 'mis/ disinformation'.  Ardern's lament about outlawing 'extremist' speech was prompted by the alleged  misinformation carried out during the pandemic by 'anti-vaxxer radicals' in tandem with her enacting vaccine mandates , in which her handling of  was heavily criticized via protests.  For BlackRock, their implementation of ESG was the forerunner of 'cancel culture', and  in latter years, encouraged the censorship of dissent via de-platforming, FBI infiltration , collusion   and  censorship   within social media companies, supported by members of the US Democratic Party, while the  other half of the duopoly, the US Republicans and their donors fair no better in this , allowing the censorship by job  termination  of a mainstream news personality to occur without protest when they began reporting facts about the US proxy war in Ukraine, and the suspicious activity of federal agents and confidential human sources ('CHS') present amongst the protesters during the  riots at the U.S. capital on January 6th 2021.

Propaganda is another form of censorship exercised actively by this participation through their media conglomerates.  This was made simpler to conduct when monopoly rules were severed for media companies in the United States  in 1996. Since its enactment by President Clinton, all  major U.S. news media outlets  came under the  control of six companies. This has allowed the complete centralization of media dissemination and its ability to create propaganda narratives resembling factual journalism in support of their corporate masters worldview, alongside the controlling political party establishment(s).  Mainstream media was never completely neutral, but has been far more open in its willingness to manipulate facts and events to suit a narrative that allows this partition to complete its objectives .  9/11,  The Bush Administration's  WMD fiasco to invade Iraq, The Syrian Conflict, Russiagate, and the Ukraine Conflict are more of the obvious examples. Propaganda, and the divisions it creates, allows corporate oligarchs and their purchased political custodians   to continue their wholesale  criminal enterprise of razing the earth of resources and wealth extraction via the continuous construction of military bases  globally Coups, proxy wars, military triangulation, assassinations, installation of authoritarian regimes, and outward acts of  forward aggression to incite larger conflicts are merely the cost of expanding global capital. What was once thought tabu and incontrovertibly amoral and inhumane, is now normalized. Nuclear war is now a viable option where as twenty five years ago, was considered the end of all biological life on earth, a summation of a fools errand in  the most evil and malevolent  order. 

The efficacy of the impact of propaganda, including the deliberate perversion of intended context, has been long-lasting, allowing large swaths of populations globally to disenfranchise themselves through partisan echo-chambers online and further caste into self-implemented  silos within society,  divided amongst themselves and be devoid of critical thought and deductive reasoning. This partition has been successful, well-organized, focused and unified: never wavering from its putrid  narratives, false flags and persistent   suppression of dissonance  and distillation of meaningful oversite into its own  moribund, greedy, sallow, and violent psychopathy.

How The Global Mass Killing Starts

By keeping populations in perpetual divisions along cultural and political enmity,  it thwarts any ability at reconciliation to a unified revolt against the corrupt and self-enriching establishment. The partition is terrified always, of our sheer numbers and need to retain us in these silos, so  we do not recognize class inequality is our enemy, not one another. Its simplifies the ability to murder us all in greater numbers across dense populations with no threat of mass revolution.

Once the food & water sources are controlled and commodified globally, all communications monitored , all  legacy and social media  'cleansed' of all dissidence, the role of militarized law enforcement  will be to incarcerate the dissenters, and kill the rest as warranted. Simultaneously, once conglomerated control has been established across multiple countries using multiple entities and 'store front' NGOs, the killing of all 'non compliant' beings will be  made simpler and efficient.   American police departments , for example ,  currently operate under 'qualified immunity' from prosecutorial actions taken against them for criminal malfeasance and murder, and one only need to look closely at the western history of policing as a modern construct having evolved from being created as a  security force that was not allied with the state, to a state-sanctioned  law enforcement apparat,  whose only real function  is to guard the centers of commerce from theft and malfeasance, and  to protect land owners and public property  against  trespass and  vandalization by the enemies of the state: the public. 

As law enforcement agencies globally are  an extension of the courts in every country in which  they exist, the courts themselves are allied with what used to be known as the affluent merchant class.  In the 21st century, there is the continued  relationship of  Corporate corruption  between the courts  and  the 1% via purchased politicians. The claims of  service to the public safety as their primary duty by many in this partition is absolute fiction. Britain, France , Germany, and nearly all of Europe have police forces that are  structured akin  to military organizations and function similarly as law enforcement militias in authoritarian regimes such as Iran and China.  (The only western countries that have yet to militarize their law enforcement is Australia , who normally move in lockstep with the U.S. on many similar policies , and New Zealand, whom, in 2020 had opportunity to militarize their police forces but inevitably declined.)  

As such, the Corporate/ Donor class partition can direct The Law Enforcement/ Para-military partition to adjust its scope of operations by increase of incarceration, and expand the allowance of  lethal force (murder)  to maintain control of the masses and to silence dissent permanently. Many in this partition worldwide are actively engaged in unwarranted violations of human rights and sanctioned murder as it stands it would not take great effort for these partitions to coordinate into intercontinental  death squads quietly executing such a covert oppression doctorate on an unsuspecting proletariat.

Climate change and its continued politicization and censorship by NGOs will do much to aid in crushing human dissent alongside life. Despite the best efforts of scientific community to neutrally  and accurately report on climate impacts on human existence, it is organizations who have  a vested interest in maintaining their stature within the Corporate/ Donor partition and governments who will continue  to weaponize distortions of science to its personal benefit. The exact nature of  human industrial activity places the primary offenders -  70%  of  the earths carbon footprinting, coming from the the partition itself. Another partition member, the fossil fuel industry, enjoys record-breaking subsidies on oil and coal extraction globally, all the while,  a fellow partition member, corporate agriculture and food processing, is successfully pushing back against all attempts at meaningful regulation of their excessive methane output. It is obvious why this area is of  grave concern for them, as they are the group responsible for a larger part of human pollution and environmental damage, and since 1970 , the partition has engaged in a full-throated campaign of misdirection by enlisting  and manipulating the publics participation in environmental stewardship by making the public the primary scapegoat of this damage. What started with  an Italian actor from Brooklyn dressed in surreptitious stereotypical Native American  regalia in a public service ad, has now became a full-throated mammoth theatrical production the partition sponsors and produces every year in different cities. A narrative- controlling road show, replete with lofty unattainable and  unrealistic goals, illusory themes  of environmental  advancements and new , imaginative adjectives to describe its ongoing progress and programs. 

Circus and bread for the pseudo-progressive class, and the largest act of placation on the world stage, and for proletariat consumption.

At the killing stage, the  billionaire members of the partition do not want to have to share quarters on any level with a impoverished  population now dying of  from the effects  of accelerated climate change brought on primarily of and by their own activity. The global south, after decades of military adventurism be visited upon them primarily by the US Military Industrial Complex, will most likely to be extinguished  first under the  WEF members Malthusian  construct of lowering the population to contravene any ethical return of wealth and resources the Corporate/ Donor class partition has stolen. This will require further assassinations and coups ( similar to  what  French Prime Minister Macron is embarking on in Niger at the time of this writing), and greater authoritarian  control of materials and natural resources ( such as lithium, titanium and cobalt) coveted by this partition.

While censorship, restriction of free movement through quasi-surveillance techniques and technologies, and complete control of the earths homo sapiens  are preferred by this partition, they can and will choose the  committing of mass genocide of millions if deemed necessary to preserve their Kingdoms of Capital and Resources. As of right now,  they tirelessly work towards the goal of an  ultra- global hegemony. The existence of nations will be reduced to nothing more than meaningless nomenclature on a map, having as much substantive weight as political 'parties'. The partition isn't interested in preservation of national sovereignty (which was originally invented by the expansion of capitalist trade, post-original monarchial rule), or rule of law. The partition has no interest in humanity, and barely recognizes it as a  viable living organism worthy of saving , although they are biological human themselves.  we the proletariat are  a nuisance to be dealt with, fodder for their wars, and expendable like used shoes.

And we are helping them to end us, for the completion of their 'happy ending':  the retention of all the wealth and power, and the dispatching of all of us who are simply taking up their valuable space.

We are in the stupor of awe, captivated by our captors,  worshipping their wealth and unbridled omnipotence ,  little are we aware that we idolize the very partition who will have us all murdered , in those silos of our own making, and we will be the ones whom assist with the pulling of the trigger while they steady the gun to our head. 

We comply to the divisions they manufacture and we consume. We know something is very  wrong  but do nothing to organize as a species against it. We continue to excel in the  mental masturbation of distraction, whilst in the global south millions of human beings are being destroyed and displaced for the North's continued extraction, not understanding that, now, the western consumer themselves is next in line for the guillotine....

In cold silence of our demise, there will seemingly be nary a whisper that will carry in the droll vacuums of capitalism's death machine: in the fields of blood , ash, and rubble we will be nothing more than  a currency, spent.

Te Whakatupato: The Great American Petulance of Inequality Is Coming to New Zealand.

KC SHOEN

                

            People Not-Gathered- After Vacant Souls, from the album The Darkest August (2006), available here

The United States is in free-fall, and its fleeing donor class are looking for a new place in which they can pull the ripcord and land softly with their assets and stocks in tact, ready to commit more colossal  rape of sovereignty via resources extraction and  revenue stealing from another location not yet despoiled by such republic-ending ravages, and have chosen Aotearoa.

 It appears, however, that New Zealand doesn't want 'em.

Dylan Lawrence, the General manager of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) put it quite plainly:"...we say the investment's got to be good for New Zealand not just good for the investor, and by that I mean how real is it, does it create jobs for New Zealanders, does it bring capability networks, technology, or does it provide access to new markets?" (Emphasis added).

Mr. Lawrence doesn't seem so smitten with just firing open the storm doors of permanent residency to allow access to the pathological  stock buy-back  prostitutes of the American financial, capital and investment sector.  And why should he? It would allow these psychopathic vermin  access to  a new environment with which they can  destroy the ecology, wring the economy bone dry until it is a parched fissure of immense inequality, then prop up its mortal remains to directly updraft monies via diminishing purchasing power and depreciated wages of the working class: exactly as they have done before.

It is neither aberration nor accident the expanding wealth gap that was occurring here prior to CoVID 19. Although not nearly the Great Crevasse of The Disparate United States  the suspicions of potential impropriety should remain raised. It is under cover of CoVID the US will slide into fascism, and it is that same cover that could see New Zealand inadvertently become the next playground of toxic capitalism to wreck the diverse but delicate economic landscape, while it is still has not yet started its full recovery. 

And whilst many should be concerned about 20% of New Zealand's  wealth being in the possession of 1% of the population, and the fall of the median income within the last year , it should be understood that inequality is already a  blatant feature of capitalism, existing in every freemarket society and is not incidental. CoVID 19 has exacerbated this element of the globalized  supply-side/ suppressed wages construct through small business closures and high unemployment via redundancies. Since the global market melt-down of 2008, the worlds financially affluent have benefited  from stock buy-backs and the 'zombification' of many financial institutions across the entirety of all western nations, those  having still  not generated any true revenue in over a decade, and are perpetually being issued governmental bail outs to continue functioning as frontal facades 

The unemployment rate has held steady at 4% percent, and the wage subsidy scheme issued by Jacinda Ardern's government have proved effective enough to stop the train from riding off the cliff, with Auckland itself  hemorrhaging 250 jobs per day on average during that same spread of time (June-August 2020) before settling down to recent  relative normal. The country still stands poised to rebound locally and can well take on the international markets again when they resume into the 'new normal'. The 'team of 5 million' (or which I and my family were proudly part of) coordinated the most dramatic crushing of CoVID the world has witnessed, even through the island's 2nd wave of the virus.

All taken however, the concern should be placed on  governments fealty to corporate confluence directed firstly, at the likes of Winston Peters , whom is not bashful about receiving favors in exchange for policy consideration from himself and his current party. Anytime members of government who get testy when confronted  by the local media about  questionable receipts of gifts and money from special interests, or feigns indigence at being rendered reasonable questions that do not coddle them need to be evaluated with great scrutiny ( props to the local media for putting the  'wood' to him, and not backing down)  

Concern, also, needs to rest upon candidates, like Judith Collins, whom possess right-wing, nationalist tendencies, favors combative rhetoric over substantive , measured debates on policy and stewardship, and are seeming lacking in self-awareness when its comes to their own willful ignorance. As I have often pontificated with great redundancy, all forms of conservative Nationalism should be absolutely dismissed as nothing more than xenophobic and corporate servile rhetoric used to partition those of the normative 'aggrieved' class against those whom are 'outsiders' , blamed for all societal ills and shortcomings.

Speaking of service to the 'managerial/ elite' class , Jacinda Ardern  also needs closer scrutiny on this matter. Although rather a seemingly harmless gesture of economic good will to allow  James Cameron's crew to fly  directly into Wellington during New Zealand's Level 4 lockdown to complete filming for the Avatar series in March, it also expresses a potential favourtism the Prime Minister  possesses toward vested Corporate confluence, even during a pandemic. 

And however impressive her emergency management of CoVID in Aotearoa, and her previous pronouncements of being a 'social democrat' , having gone as far as to acknowledge the outright failure of Capitalism , Ms. Ardern has yet to demonstrate the will to put a halt to the over-protectionism of the New Zealand real estate market, which has ballooned unrealistically over the last two months  (August through September 2020), and has not addressed the inevitable outcome of such protracted parlance upon inequality. Ardern was also a silent partner when it has come to the Deputy Prime Minister Peters' various conflicts of interests over the last year.

These rather seemingly inane examples of governmental inaction and self-interst is exactly how the American Corporate Vampires can seize the blood of New Zealand for sheer profiteering at the expense of the working class. In the U.S., it started with a simple letter of an appointed Supreme Court Judge that set off the American Corporate elite to push back against the counter-culture of the 1960's. Today, every American politician  (irrespective of 'Party', which has no further ideological meaning beyond window dressing currently) is 'purchased' by way of a lurid and filthy corporate pandering called 'lobbyism'. Policy is then 'purchased' as collusion , as both maladroit and cowardly entities then set about raping the system through reduction of public safety nets and social programs (including retirement pensions), and consuming all the rest in reckless abandon for thier enrichment. with 1% of the population holding 97% of the wealth and access thereto.

So, to my Kiwi and Māori whānau,  this American pākehā  is sending a harsh warning:The shit can happen here. CoVID is still among us, and  if you need any further 'motivation' as to the legitimacy of this fact-based article, I direct your attention to the  220,000 dead corpses buried under various American geographic locations that 'lie' as proof  that the corruption allowed in the U.S. help kill them all (and continue to kill more). The American donor class does not care about you, your country, your family or your lives. The New Zealand government, alongside Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of these self-aggrandizing  American psychopathic 'Captains Of Industry' should be put in serious check, unless a future world of inequity,  involving living hand-to-mouth in perpetuity coupled with spates of homelessness sounds like a good option....

Prepare the Casket and the Eulogy: America's Pending Death by Exceptionalism

 

KC SHOEN

    

History has arrived at the station of being where long-hallowed veneers now evaporate for the U.S. The generations of denial, greed, corporate corruption, inequality, civic apathy, racial violence and consumerism have reached an 'event horizon': the long endgame. It is now the space where the polemic of pandemic, poverty, fascist brutality and protest now intersect. and need to deliver change, not just critical for improved civic engagement and civil cohabitation, but to the survival of the United States itself, now exposed as being absolutely nothing more than the failed republic that it is. 

It cannot be excoriated  enough, and with any excessive abundance;  the needful elimination of the illusory construct  the U.S. ever being egalitarian, humane , tolerant, equal or free; all in  itself a  worshipful lie of its Christian founding.  To simply succumb to such pompous piety,  would be declaring eugenics not the heart of confluence to a jailed war veteran who attempted to force the capitulation  of Austria via authoritarian overthrow as response to his country's failure post -WWI...

Reverence in the phantom leviathan of  racially-based Anglo exceptionalism fueled three-and-half centuries of colonialism worth of willful ignorance and  denial among the bourgeois elites ,  enabling  the cultural and religious justification of slavery which did not cease until 1865 (alongside the slaughter and displacement of indigenous peoples throughout this period). From that seizure of practice,  continued forward 150 years of 'Jim Crow' legislation, segregation, racial riots,  lynching, perpetual foreign wars, obstruction of human rights both in foreign lands, and domestic territories against the impoverished and people of color.

American culture in the past as in the present tense, remains defined by tyrannical religious zealotry,  technological advancements  in warfare  and gun violence, materialism , witless pop culture iconoclasm and celebrity worship. The difference now is that the US in the throes of self annihilation. CoVID 19 has fleshed out and drawn bare the American Dumb, in all its arrogant gravitas, anti-intellectual splendor. The realm of the American affluent liberal acolytes  of academia does not escape this blistering critique , as their bashing of the working class and subtle idolatry in acquiescence  to the corrupt corporate masters they 'worship' to for their own interests, while making pseudo-progressive overtures in action and deed, is equally as 'stupid' as their uneducated counterparts they assume prowess over.

If you are among of the unfortunate 350 million gasping for air in the United Cesspool of America who are not card-carrying members of the gilded and criminal elite 1%,  you are being bitch-slapped on the daily with rampant disease,  unemployment, riots, threats of local and federally sponsored police kidnappings and  terrorism, militia violence, inaccessibility to emergency medical services, eviction, homelessness, and the dangerous exposure to idiot motherfuckers who refuse to wear masks, who  think the pandemic is a hoax, alongside  the other maskless vermin,  the QAnon worshiping trailer-park all-star inbreeds who are certain that pizzerias, pederasts, registered 'Democrats' and Hollywood 'liberals' are conspiring together to bring America to an end by child sex trafficking on a demonic spectrum , then selling its national entrails to China.  

Couple this with the reality that your incumbent President is cementing his permanent station within the Oval Office as your Supreme Leader via suspending the 2020 election ( and enacting Martial law in the ensuing mass public unrest), so  that aside the pre-ascribed  manifested petulance (which itself makes your continuing survival questionable), you may have to go into hiding if you are not in 'alignment' with Big Brother Trump and Company.  The scepter of permanent incarceration around other CoVID convicts nation-wide will be a death sentence in itself if you are not careful and compliant...

Empires always reach such active levels of hubris upon their inevitable extinction, but America's moribund death-knell is quite something to behold, indeed. Accelerated by a vicious virus that was met by the very aforementioned stupidity,  exposed it to be the den of inequity it has always been throughout its densely slave-infested, derisive, violent, barbarian history.  And while I appreciate Wade Davis' romantic sentiments in  regards to America's  unraveling , it is still done through the annoying lens that most Americans themselves allow their vision to be clouded by: exceptionalism.

The cultural beatification of American exceptionalism is the very reason why the U.S. is now on its way to the failed-state graveyard. The conditioning and propagandizing of the past two and a half centuries of its existence ensured its demise would be assigned rapidly into the vacuum bag of history. In its beginning, the founding fathers and their euro-white colonist brethren  sanctified the evils of the imprisonment of  Africans kidnapped and sold into chattel slavery, the murder of indigenous peoples and criminal acquisition  of their lands,  the further destruction  of local culture through puritanical religious doctrines establishing missions and colonies to forcibly convert and kill indigenous people as warranted. This fanaticism of exceptionalism became as sacrosanct when Monroe dropped his doctrine in 1823, directing American foreign policy as right to invade the sovereignty of other nations as warranted to preserve its sphere of influence without European usurpation. Andrew Jackson would cement the exceptionalism of the European descendants and their power to 'redraw' the map domestically whenever suited for Anglo expansion during his vicious,  pre-civil war tenure .

Throughout the latter 19th and prevailing 20th century a society was borne from this through generations that would collectively believe itself to be indispensable to the world at large: the most free, the largest of all capacity for opportunity unmatched in the planet, the most democratic of all governments, the most productive. The myth of exceptionalism seemed solidified in full view of the world after America's victorious involvement in WW II. At 6% of the world population, the US ran the table with providing nearly 90% of the worlds goods. 

Americas outreach, confluence, economy and culture became at once stratospheric, monolithic and legendary. Nearly twenty years of world dominance in these arenas were astounding indeed. It was  also the period of ultra-conformity  imposed upon the boomer generation who would come of age during this time (1945-1962), as their parents wanted the absolute best for this generation after they had suffered the Great Depression and fought fiecely during the proceeding war.  They wanted their kinder not to stand out or be different, honor all authority as absolute, stay away from 'free-thinkers' and 'creatives',  get an approved, socially acceptable career, get married, swim with the rest of programmed minnows and be a brick in the Great Wall of American  Exceptionalism.

This same generation would be the ones to lead the US straight off a cliff, for their own enrichment. Consider this:

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of  1965, and all the well-intended social safety nets that were created during the 60's and  70's  did not change the realities for Blacks in America. Lack of upward social mobility, affordable medical access, fair housing, financial equality, coupled with voter suppression, excessive incarceration, police brutality aka "death by cop" are all as active in  the present tense as in time 30, 40 50, 100 even 150 years previous. 

Regardless of this obvious anomaly,  white boomers like to gloss themselves as the music and protest generation, yet, at the first instance they could glom any patronage of status, position and money within the upper classes through their white entitlement they ran for it, and did not give a shit who they left behind, or stepped on in the process to get there. Once Tricky Dick resigned from the Oval office, and Vietnam was over, their obligation to  'social consciousness' was swiftly concluded. The younger boomers later became known as the 'Me Generation' of the 70's and early 80's :  the self-enamored,  self-entitled, and mean-spirited sect that sparked the rise of serial killings, child abductions, rapes and homicides,  later on being the fore-bearers of  modern American Gun  Entitlement:  mass public shootings.

With  exception of Reagan and Obama, it has been primary boomer administrations like the Clintons , G.W. Bush and Donald John Trump that continued to sell this sense of American exceptionalism always for personal gain.  Boomer corporate trouser stains such as Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan Chase), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Larry Kudlow (current Director of National Economic Council) Larry Summers  (Former Director of the EC as well as the U.S. Treasury under Clinton), and David Robert Malpass (President of The World Bank) have all successfully, and in part, over  the course of 50 years en total,  collectively  created, and personally benefited from, the continued creation of American inequality.

 

 

 Source:Economic Policy Institute, current as of 24 August 2020

The Boomers became the very epitome of what they sought to set themselves apart from: greedy, selfish conformists, and permanent members of the establishment who have enabled and  perpetuated unjustified  foreign wars in support of breaking the sovereignty of independent nations for economic and political gain. Maintaining segregation and inequality between whites and non-whites, the affluent class and the impoverished working class through instruments of law and individualism..

Less the heroic pastime warriors for justices old a la  Malcolm X,  Huey P. Newton, or Abbie Hoffman,  but more the obsession for power, prestige, control and corporate glory akin to Richard Milhous Nixon and the Powell Memo

The true 'face' of American Exceptionalism.

To relegate the entire onus of Americas death-by-tropes entirely on this whinging mob of megalomaniac milquetoast malcontents, (however may be it personally satisfying), would not be accurate, and doesn't answer for the deficiencies of the descendant groups from Gen X to Z.

Americans became complacent, lazy and willfully ignorant within the last 40 years in particular, and did not proffer uprising nor meaningful resistance when Reagan delayed release of the American hostages in Iran to coincide with his inauguration, stripped the negotiating power of Unions, deregulated Wall Street, or  when Clinton dropped his 'three strikes' aberration decimating black communities, anti- Rooseveltian New Deal policies  sharply curtailing  the public safety net, lesser regulations regarding black-box derivatives stocks that would crater the economy in two major crashes in 2000 and 2007-8 fomenting further inequality between social classes, etc.

Americans constantly vote against  their own interests, inheriting more degenerative, selfish , criminal, even violent leaders in both local and national levels in every election cycle since 1968. This is the aspect of exceptionalism that creates the space of apathy, of  'everything will be fine , we are America'  has constantly interceded into reasonable and honest discourse, disrupting critical thinking  necessary to adjudicate that things are fucked up and why.

 The hallucinogenic and hyperbolic fervor over conspiracy theories, anti-intellectualism, anti-science and non-factual hubris has been a feature of American ideology and culture  for the entirety of its existence, for certain. Exceptionalism allows the inexplicable to be reasoned away, the illogical to abscond and dissolve genuine fact for belief as truth, dominates discourse with rancor, repetition and threat, rather than verifiable bonafides. It is the vaunted superstition of old, reconstituted as 'fact'  to subordinate a  peculiar belief or construct, giving and inciting drama over phantoms and shadows, so as obstruct the obligation to face the adversity of  our existence directly. 

It has maturated from existential threat to full bore 'alive' in the present: CoVID 19 will be the pandemic that catapulted the US into fascism under Trump, as there will be no election with which to remove him. No matter the frequency of our history screaming into our present, the lights our going out in America. From anti-vaxxers, anti-mask Trump supporters to dunderhead, inept Neo-liberal politicians to the biased-fed masses who place their allegiance to MSNBC, Fox News, CNN and Washington Post-like echo chambers, many Americans will meet their death by exceptionalism in the end , both as a society and as a nation.

There is  no loud  rumble of sustained multi-million person resistance on the horizon to undo the damage of corporate malfeasance which has fed racial and economic inequality, as would be necessary to exact necessary revolution. Americans as a collective continue to leave this to "others" when there are no "others " to take up the fight. Americans are too comfortably divided  to unify over such an obvious encroachment and destroyer of human existence such as inequality: that would require the acknowledgement that America is , and has been for about 5 decades, a shithole country, that America has fostered and has been primed for fascistic take-over.  

Required acknowledgement, too, is  the fact that the incompetent handling of the pandemic was simply  that: incompetent. America has the highest percentage of dead and infected that any. other. nation. period.  It has held this distinction since April 2020.

 It would require acknowledgement of the dark, disgusting history which built and sustained  it, with Trump being understood as its end-product, not its source. It requires that the centuries-worth of evolving  latitudes of propaganda , euphemistic doublespeak, entrenched conditioning, religious zealotry and lying sobriquets of American Exceptionalism be dropped entirely from the synapses and lexicon of a nation,  to unify as a society, and allow capacity to survive and regroup to foment and awaken.  

It will not happen. There seems to be not enough death, violence, state sponsored terror or socioeconomic ruin to bring this dilapidated bastard Republic together to enlighten itself.

Best prepare your casket and eulogy, then. Your exceptionalism is terminal.